Sobre la naturaleza del totalitarismo: Dos ensayos de comprensión

by Hannah Arendt, Jerome Kohn (Editor), Roberto Ramos Fontecoba (Translator)

128 pages, Paperback

Published October 13, 2025

About the author

Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held a number of academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975. She is best known for two works that had a major impact both within and outside the academic community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical antecedents of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second, The Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the fundamental categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action). In addition to these two important works, Arendt published a number of influential essays on topics such as the nature of revolution, freedom, authority, tradition and the modern age. At the time of her death in 1975, she had completed the first two volumes of her last major philosophical work, The Life of the Mind, which examined the three fundamental faculties of the vita contemplativa (thinking, willing, judging).

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dos ensayos muy actuales a pesar de estar escritos en 1951.
Una radiografía de nuestra realidad. La desafección política como caldo de cultivo para el fanatismo. La construcción de realidades paralelas y bulos para imponer la política del miedo. El ensañamiento contra un grupo étnico o social para crear sentido de pertenencia. El miedo como objetivo para mantenerse en el poder.

Todo explicado en tan solo 120 páginas.

[Victor Fernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dos ensayos que esclarecen su magnífica obra “Los orígenes del totalitarismo” (1951).
Los uso la autora para cursos y conferencias que impartía.
Es una magnífica obra donde aclara muchos conceptos sobre el totalitarismo.
Desnuda al hombre de todas sus ideas y comportamientos, lo hace un ser aislado y fácilmente manipulable.

[Santiago Aparicio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sin ser una aproximación intensa y compuesto por varios escritos de diversos momentos intelectuales, contiene lo básico para distinguir un totalitarismo de una dictadura/tiranía.